Toward a sustainable housing stock: How to optimize between costs of energy and housing costs

The living costs of households are not only set by the price of rent or mortgage but also by dwelling-related costs like energy and water. Especially the energy costs show an upward trend. The accumulation of housing costs and costs of energy occurs especially in the less insulated part of the housing stock, mostly the older dwellings. Often these dwellings are occupied by lower income households. If the situation remains unchanged, in the future some of them can hardly afford their housing costs. For those landlords that are responsible for the accommodation of lower income groups the steering on living costs (rent plus dwelling related costs) becomes more and more an issue. But also for the heavily mortgaged households in the owner occupied sector the accumulation of these costs can become problematic. This paper will explore which types of households in the rental as well as owner occupied sector will have affordability problems in the future as a consequence of the increase of dwelling related costs. The research is based on an extensive survey in the region of Eindhoven, in which the housing costs of several types of households are investigated in relation with the energy performance of different dwelling types. To look more closely to the housing costs of several households a lot of cost-items are listed (rent or mortgage, energy costs, cost for water, insurance, taxes, etc.). Another part of the questionnaire is used to get insight in the energy performance of their dwellings. This research gives not only understanding of the current housing costs of households. Moreover, it forms a good base to formulate some prognoses for the coming years. The main parameters in these prognoses are: - development of the energy costs; - energy-saving policy - development of the household incomes. By combining these prognoses with possible cost developments of energy, three types of scenarios are being formulated; a best case, basic case and worst case scenario. The paper ends with the way these prognoses and scenarios lay the foundations for a pro-active policy by the stakeholders involved.